Out of 20,365 complaints registered since 2016, only 31 have been resolved so far by the BBMP
Naandika Tripathi
Bangalore, January 18, 2018: Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) complaints resolution process is moving at a snail’s pace. Only 15 per cent of all civic complaints have been resolved since 2016.
Anupam Saxena, one of the complainants, said his one-month-old complaint regarding non-functional street lights in Hennur remains unresolved even now.
He tweeted his complaint number and tagged BBMP commissioner, N Manjunatha Prasad.
In response, the commissioner sent him the number of an Assistant Executive Engineer. The number is not reachable.
Girish Kumar, Assistant Engineer from BBMP claimed that some complaints like power cut issues, fallen trees, dog menace, water supply and so on lodged in BBMP Complaint Monitoring System are not related to the BBMP.
“We transfer these complaints to the concerned department”, Kumar added.
Yet the BBMP Complaints Monitoring System shows that out of the 20,365 and counting complaints, only seven have been forwarded to other departments, 5613 are unresolved and 14,721 are works in progress.
In addition to the existing Sahaaya App for registration of civic complaints, BBMP also launched a ‘Fix My Street’ app in December 2016. Here, citizens can upload a picture of any civic issue like a dug-up road or a pothole with its location and their comments. However, this has not been of much help, either.
R Venkatesh, Chief Engineer from BBMP said, “BBMP launched “Fix My Street” app in December last year. We are given deadlines to resolve the issue and we have been receiving a lot of complaints and are trying our best to address all of them on time”.
However, a recent report claimed that within six days of its launch, the “Fix My Street” app received 2830 complaints and only 331 were resolved.
The complaints once registered are classified zone- and department-wise. They are then forwarded to the department concerned. Some complaints require a long term solution and thus take a long time to get resolved, said Girish Kumar of BBMP.
Venkatesh, another complainant, said that when he registered a complaint regarding a dug up road in Sarjapur, he received a call from BBMP saying that this issue will be resolved by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewage Board.
“The major problem with the app is that it is not accepting the complaint even if it is coming under the BBMP,” said Venkatesh.
“The number of complaints is only going to increase and remain unresolved until and unless BBMP stops shuffling the complaints and blame game,” he added.
Pankaj Yadav, an Urban Planner stated that, “For a city like Bangalore, a decentralized system is required to tackle local issues. Case examples from mohalla sabha of Delhi can be taken as an example; more power should be given to resident welfare associations to put pressure on government organizations like BWSSB. Online mechanism is useful for lodging the complaint but action part and its accountability is not clearly defined.”
